Web Services in Hand

Palm and BEA Systems are teaming up to deliver Web services to Palm-based handhelds.

Palm Inc.s Palm Solutions Group has teamed with BEA Systems Inc. to announce a long-term strategic relationship to deliver Web services to Palm-based handheld devices.
Palm will develop tools and a device-side software suite for simplifying development and deployment of mobile Web services to extend enterprise applications on Palm handhelds, said the San Jose, Calif.-based company. Meanwhile, Palm and BEA will work together to integrate this solution with BEA WebLogic Server 7.0 and BEA WebLogic Workshop products as server-side controls. This Palm SG solution will be the first WebLogic Workshop control developed for a handheld device.
Sources said a key element of this agreement is Palms new Reliable Transport technology as a core infrastructure component. Reliable Transport enables users to send XML data back and forth between the server and Palm handhelds. The solution will be designed to easily allow Palm developers to use BEA WebLogic Workshop as the server-side programming framework, while WebLogic Workshop developers can utilize Reliable Transport to send messages to and from Palm handhelds, the company said.

This agreement backs Palms strategy to deliver broad development support and simplify access to enterprise applications, the company said. The agreement also enables BEAs strategic mobile and wireless partners like Palmto allow enterprise and application developers to easily create and deploy mobile applications, as well as extend enterprise data and Web services to Palm handheld devices on the industry-leading BEA WebLogic Enterprise Platform.

"Our experience and expertise with mobile business systems development helps us appreciate the significance and value of the Palm/BEA initiative," said Tracy Trent, chief executive officer of Stellcom Inc., a San Diego-based Palm user, in a statement. "We understand the challenges inherent in designing robust, secure and transactional business solutions on intermittent mobile networks. The Palm/BEA initiative directly addresses these common challenges. It integrates the capabilities of a secure, robust and highly adaptive mobile networking engine with the power and flexibility of an industry-leading, enterprise Web services development platform. This combination offers developers and systems integrators like Stellcom a powerful new foundation for developing solid mobile business solutions."
"BEA WebLogic Workshop can deliver an industry-leading framework for reliable Web services capabilities to our enterprise customers," said Byron Sebastian, vice president and general manager, BEA WebLogic Workshop and BEA WebLogic Portal, BEA Systems, in a statement. "With the Palm relationship, were in a position to enable enterprises to integrate all their applications on top of a unified, simplified, extensible and mobile application infrastructure platform."
"This partnership with BEA signifies the high degree of commitment Palm has to provide enterprise customers with what they need to extend their core business data and applications to wherever their employees are working," said Todd Bradley, president and chief operating officer, Solutions Group, Palm Inc., Milpitas, Calif. "We believe mobility will be a key driver for successful businesses in the future. We are particularly attracted to BEA because of its commitment to industry standards and its strong track record of innovation."
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Darryl K. Taft covers the development tools and developer-related issues beat from his office in Baltimore. He has more than 10 years of experience in the business and is always looking for the next scoop. Taft is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and was named 'one of the most active middleware reporters in the world' by The Middleware Co. He also has his own card in the 'Who's Who in Enterprise Java' deck.